Alciphron

rhetorician who wrote a collection of fictitious letters, a form of literature popular in his day. About 120 letters have survived. The background of them all is Athens in the 4th century BC, and the imaginary writers are farmers, fishermen, parasites (stock comic figures known for living off others), and hetairai (highly cultivated courtesans). The material of the letters is largely derived from the writers of the so-called New Comedy. They are written in an imitation of the pure Attic dialect and in the opinion of most scholars show traces of the influence of Alciphron's contemporary Lucian.